


begin

by Caisar



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [5]
Category: Run (TV)
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Experimental Style, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Pre-Canon, Pre-Episode: s01e01 Run
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-13
Updated: 2020-04-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:21:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23656030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caisar/pseuds/Caisar
Summary: He's thirty-four. He's living the glamorous life everyone dreams of, sans the downwards spiral that comes with it. He's getting hammered in a hotel bar, because he's too well-known to be left alone elsewhere. He prefers to carry no more than what he must and is spontaneous enough to drop everything and run if he feels like it, never to look back.All of these are lies.
Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1626937
Comments: 16
Kudos: 18
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	begin

He's thirty-four. He's living the glamorous life everyone dreams of, sans the downwards spiral that comes with it. He's getting hammered in a hotel bar, because he's too well-known to be left alone elsewhere and anyway, he likes the practicality that comes with not having to navigate more than the elevator back to his room and bed. He likes the simplicity of it. He prefers to carry no more than what he must and is spontaneous enough to drop everything and run if he feels like it, never to look back.

All of these are lies.

The truth goes more like this:

He's thirty-four. He's... not world-renown, exactly, but he's doing all right for himself. Except for the nights where he switches off his phone and goes on a binge, which doesn't happen often enough to warrant Fiona confiscating his credit cards. Certainly not. Fiona should have known better than to touch his credit cards when he's paying hers—but Fiona isn't the one sitting at a crappy hotel bar with twenty quids in her wallet, which doesn't mean shite in this country anyway, downing shot after crappy shot because the rounds go on her new friend's tab tonight and her new friend only drinks shots, so—

So.

He's thirty-four. He's not getting hammered at a crappy hotel bar because he already _got_ hammered elsewhere. Wherever. It wasn't crappy and it wasn't a hotel and they put him out on his arse far sooner than any bar he has ever flashed his wallet in, so it wasn't here. _Thank god_ it wasn't here. He bloody hates hotel bars. Hotel bars are for the rich and the desperate, those who won't mind pissing away a couple hundred on watered down or overpriced drinks if it means they won't go back to their hotel rooms alone.

He's not rich. He might be desperate, a little, because his new friend asks _hey, wanna come up to my room_ and he says _yes_ , he says _sure_ and—and he doesn't know why he does. Maybe Fiona was right. Maybe he was scared of dying alone, is scared of dying alone—or maybe he's just lonely and didn't want to be tonight. It happens. He's human. In fact, he's based his entire career on how human he is and people love it. People love _him_.

Just not enough to stick with him.

_Anyway_.

He goes up to his new friend's room, because he does, and he has a good time. Probably. He wakes up sore in the right places but in the wrong room, which is to say, his own room—which is neither here nor there. He freshens up enough to feel somewhat human, checks the small room for a note, checks his skin in the mirror, checks his phone for a message from an unknown number. 

What he finds: He didn't _want_ to find anything. Not exactly. It hurts to lose another connection before he's even made it; but it doesn't _matter_. None of it—none of _them_ ever has. There isn't a single person he has ever met in his entire life that he ever wants to see again.

Except—

He's thirty-four. He's done some very stupid things in his life. He will go on to do more. None of his mistakes will ever mean more to him than what he's about to do. 

The screen is still unlocked under his thumbs. His heart beating in his throat in time with the throb of his head, he finds _her_ contact page, goes into messages and types, _RUN_. 

**Author's Note:**

> So I watched the pilot and had to put my feelings _somewhere_ before I burst. There's likely something deeper and possibly darker than mere self-destruction in Billy's past, so this will get Jossed before the third episode is out, but oh well.
> 
> Written for Bad Things Happen Bingo, for the prompt: on the run (5/25 filled; find the full list [here](https://desynchimminent.tumblr.com/post/181821535129/received-my-card-for-bad-things-happen-bingo-full).)


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